Community Member: Mag

Mag

Retired, Age 67

Married

Has lived in Hayfork 45 years

Mag wants regulation, and is deeply upset about the effects marijuana growing has had on her community.

How has the community changed since marijuana farming has become so prevalent?

When (Proposition) 215 passed, and then (Proposition) 420…when that became legislated, everybody got sick. And I used to say, ‘You know, we should call the CDC (The Center for Disease Control and Prevention), we have a hotbed of illnesses here in Hayfork.’ Everybody became sick. Because initially that was everybody’s approach. We had doctors that pulled up at Frontier Village and slapped it up in the parking lot and sold 215 cards out of their car. After that it went to big grows fairly quickly. Most people really were in it for profit. Because the law says you can’t be a profiteer […] but people are in it for profit.

Why do you perceive that as a problem?

It’s the effect on the community. I think that’s why I resent it. They’re making all this money in our community. Because in the beginning it was ‘Grow in Hayfork, don’t snow in Hayfork.’ Nobody spent the time. It was like ‘We’re not going stay in this shithole.’ They’re here to grow and then they’re gone. They all have houses in San Francisco. They go to Mexico for the season and that makes us, makes our town, hired hands. It makes us a plantation. And people on the plantation who work there don’t make a lot of money. It’s the people above that, that next level up (who make money). So I think I resent the fact that something illegal can come into town, plop down with no regulation and no standards, do whatever they want, go where they want, set up wherever they want, however they want, and make a shitload of money and say ‘What? It’s medicine. What you do you mean I’m not a good neighbor?’ I resent that. I would resent that if it was Monsanto.

“They’re making all this money in our community. They’re here to grow and then they’re gone. And that makes us, makes our town, hired hands. It makes us a plantation. And people on the plantation who work there don’t make a lot of money.”

Because society is real, and if we’re going to live together, those parameters of society have to exist. And I’m not saying mine are always right, but the parameters of society have to exist on some level. And if you’re going to stand out here and say ‘I do whatever the fuck I want! I throw shit on my ground. I pile up garbage. I have guns and dogs. It’s my property.’…In my mind private property doesn’t mean ‘Fuck you.’ When you lose the sense of social mores then it makes that divisiveness. And trying to talk about it was impossible because the conversation was built on lies (that the growing was for medicine). And they will never tell the truth, number one because they aren’t inclined to, and number two because they feel they can’t. Because for most of them it’s a lie. They’re not growing for medicine; they’re growing for money.

I’ve tried for six years to have a conversation, and what I get back is ‘You’re a hater, you’re old, you just don’t want things to change, small town conservative’ –which I’m so not. I want someone to stand up […] and say to me ‘I grow for profit and I don’t give a shit what you think.’ That person I would sit down and have a conversation with because that would be a person who’s telling me the truth. But nobody is. Because they’ve (marijuana growers) already won, and they know it. At that last board of supervisors meeting (regarding marijuana regulation) […] someone (a marijuana grower) said ‘I don’t know what this is all about, we’ve already won. You’re outnumbered and outgunned.’ And that’s the truth. They are the winners, and they know that. What’s gonna happen now is the people who are just very offended by it are going to leave.

Are you thinking of moving?

Yes. I just feel like… it’s almost like you suddenly … you suddenly realize, okay, now I am in that age group where people observe me (and) they think I’m this way because I’m old, not because my opinion is valid. And I’ve evolved into this person who has these opinions…I don’t know, but I feel like I’m that person in this community. I don’t know what else to do, and I don’t like feeling like a victim in my community.

“I don’t know what else to do, and I don’t like feeling like a victim in my community.”

I don’t. I don’t like feeling that someone over here can grow dope, so stinky and so awful. You feel like an alien on your own planet, and I don’t like it. I would just as soon go where I don’t have to deal with it. […] I just don’t want it in my face anymore because it frustrates me and makes me sad. All the time. And I either have to divorce myself from it or… I don’t know how to change so that it doesn’t frustrate me anymore.